


Lucky Black Cat

by Himbocracy



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Amusing Misunderstanding, Aziraphale Infodumps, Literary References, M/M, human!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 09:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20794229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himbocracy/pseuds/Himbocracy
Summary: This was inspired by a tumblr post about what happened to user @dreamlogic on tumblr. The post EMANATED A/C vibes, and I couldn’t help myself. I hope no one’s mad at me for using a poor soul’s misfortunes as inspiration for my fanfic...In Crowley assumes Aziraphale was talking to him, when he actually meant his cat.





	Lucky Black Cat

Anthony had gathered a number of things about his neighbor by now. Firstly, his name was A.Z. Fell and he seemed to be an English professor of some sort. He certainly looked the part; with old-fashioned glasses and a disturbing fondness for criminally tasteless jumpers, as well as basically radiating curled-up-with-a-book-cozyness whenever he saw him. The kind of guy who’d ramble on and on about phonology conventions in Early Modern English, presumably. [1]

He’d also peeped inside his living room before, which had shelves stuffed to the brim with all kinds of books, as well as an abundance of kitschy baroque-style clutter. There was a fat black cat snoring on his armchair. Then he had stopped looking, precisely because he didn’t want to appear like a giant creep. 

Second, he knew that Fell was exeptionally gifted at baking, owing to the fact that he’d brought him an enormous and absolutely delightful batch of fairy cakes two days after Anthony had finished moving in. 

—

The doorbell rang. Outside, there stood a man with a bright smile whom he was sure he’d seen before. 

“I heard you were new in the neighborhood? _Delighted_ to meet you! I thought you’d appreciate some sweets— ah...they’re angel cake, but I’ve also got chocolate ones, if you prefer those—,” he said in a slightly posh southern accent while flapping his free hand around haphazardly. He had a kind of nervous energy.

Anthony was quite baffled. He’d lived in Mayfair beforehand, so he wasn’t exactly used to neighbors just knocking on your door one day and offering you baked goods out of the blue. He stared blankly at the beaming blonde man in front of him. Odd.  
“Er— Thank you. The name’s Anthony J. Crowley, sorry if I didn’t catch yours.” He held out his hand.

The man’s eyes widened. “Oh— of course, of course, how _terribly_ impolite of me!” And he shook his hand with just a tad too much enthusiasm. His palm was pleasantly warm.  
“A.Z. Fell. I live next door.”

“What’s it stand for?”

“Hm?”

“The...er..the initials.”

He chuckled. “My first name is Aziraphale...My parents were, well, a bit too invested in the occult and such—” 

“Aziraphale. That’s rather...—”

“Oh, my brother is called Azrael. Poor sod.”

He was definitely odd, but in a kind of endearing and blatantly homosexual way. Crowley did what he deemed his duty as a British citizen and invited him for a dignified cup of tea; subsequently discovering that he was exactly the kind of guy who talked about why “dye” and “archery” were a perfectly legitimate rhyme, at least in Shakespeare’s time.

But even after six months of picking up more information about Fell and mastering the daunting task of spelling the man’s name, after six months filled with allmorningly get-to-work meetings and coconut macaroons, financiers, and the odd babka, he couldn’t have been prepared for what happened when he was tending to his garden on one splendid spring morning. 

Maybe he had a naturally green thumb, or maybe his plants were afraid of him; but either way he was very proud of his rose bushes. He was especially proud that they were so much prettier than those of Mrs. Morrison down the road, whom he had declared his personal archnemesis after she had commented on his (admittedly) lopsided scarf at the community centre knitting club. Take that, Maureen...  
They were perfectly luscious, and he was happily watering them in his impossibly stylish gardening ensemble, which consisted of bathing shorts and a Queen t-shirt. He did not know where he had bought it or indeed remember ever particularly liking Queen, but the shirt tended to creep to the top of the pile in his wardrobe more often than it should’ve. He was beginning to suspect that they were somehow multiplying.

Suddenly he heard some soft-spoken cursing coming from the other side, the kind that made you really wish the speaker just said ‘Fuck’ instead of whatever flowery olde mock-obscenities he could come up with.

—

Aziraphale knew all too well how much Behemoth loved to run off, and also to leave black hairballs all over his treasured collection of botched bibles which he had inherited from his late father, all containing printing errors of some sorts. He was a terrible moody beast of a cat, but he supposed the company did him some good. If he hadn’t known any better, he’d even have thought that, on those days where his fuse seemed shorter than usual, Behemoth was a kind of kindred spirit. But he wasn’t having any of it today. He could and would not get around going to the vet.  
Usually Behemoth hid in the shrub near the fence, and could be bribed into coming out with a homemade tuna biscuit or two. 

Aziraphale made an effort to appear extra amiably, waving the treats in the cat’s field of vision with broad and unsubtle gestures in order to tempt Behemoth into coming from his hiding-place. 

...The cat, meanwhile, stubbornly stayed in the shrub. 

He fixed his glasses, bent over slightly, and, to what would become his ardent embarrassment, much too loudly said: “Oh, my _scrumptious_ darling boy! What _ever_ are you doing over there?”

...

He had not expected an answer. 

“Er—I was just...watering my roses?...,” a voice above him said. Oh Christ. 

He looked up, biscuits still in his hand. On the other side of the fence stood Anthony, holding a garden hose and looking supremely puzzled. Mr. Crowley’s look drifted all over him, still wearing his pajamas and a bathrobe. Aziraphale’s hair looked like a blonde birdsnest and his glasses were on crooked. Both his hands and face were covered in cat scratches, byproducts of Behemoth’s ill-temper. 

“Have- have you been baking again?,” Anthony gestured at the biscuits. Indeed, they looked quite exquisite to the unexperienced eye. [2]

“Those? Nonono—good heavens, don’t eat those please.”  
He now fully realized how this whole...situation made him look, and blushed, was utterly _mortified_. Hastily, he threw the biscuits aside; they landed somewhere in the garden, not that it mattered. Crowley looked at him like a schoolteacher at a child who’d drawn an unexpectedly gory fingerpaint picture. _Fuck._

In that moment Aziraphale was decidedly sure that he never wanted to talk to this man ever again, let alone even look him into the eyes. 

“You—you weren’t talking to me, were you?”

Behemoth jumped out of the shrubbery and made his way to where the biscuits lay. He purred contentedly as he ate them, and went inside to make himself comfortable on his owner’s rare unicate books again. Aziraphale cleared his throat awkwardly. “So...splendid weather, is it?”

— — —

(One thing had led to another, and they may or may not have got married after six more long, long years of did-he-or-didn’t-he-mean-it-like-that. And all that because of the bloody beast.)

**Author's Note:**

> [1]  
He looked like someone with a lot of very vitriolic opinions about the Oxford comma.
> 
> [2]  
Which is exactly why he had mistaken them with his favorite shortbread recipe once. They weren’t actually all that bad, but it still wasn’t at all a pleasant experience to dip a nice, scrummy biscuit into your tea in expectance of that sweet butteriness on your tongue, and get a taste of tuna instead.


End file.
